We’re obsessed with improving a person’s experience with Firefox at every turn, from finding Firefox, to downloading/installing Firefox, to actually using Firefox, to uninstalling Firefox. With an upcoming initiative, we’ve set out to improve the user’s experience at one specific moment in time – the installation process.

We know that about one in every seven Firefox downloaders complete the download process, but don’t actually install Firefox.  We’re also guessing that some percentage of people who do complete the installation process might traverse a less than optimal experience.

So what can we do about this?

Ask people if they’re interested in leaving feedback during that precise moment in time.

While an organization or community can spend all day doing data analysis to solve a problem, sometimes the best way to figure something out is to just ask people directly what they’re feeling.  To accomplish this, we’re making the following change to the Firefox installer.  If a user clicks “Cancel” during the installation process (Windows), he/she has traditionally seen the following:

By testing a new capability allowing users to leave feedback, the revised installer will change the “are you sure question” to look like this:

Our plan is to run this modified installer for a single day (sometime in March) and see what findings we arrive at before considering making such a change permanent.  There are a few things to note here:

• The default would be an unchecked check box.
• The image above is only a mock-up.  The actual modified installer will likely look somewhat different.

So, what happens if a user indicates they’re interested in providing feedback?  Stay tuned for a follow-up post…